


Pressure

by Glasuhr



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: 'geth do not infiltrate' my ass, Could be interpreted as bromance, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Legion is kind of a stalker, Other, Shepard has a bit of a potty mouth, Shepard is tired, That's why it's rated T
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 18:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1315729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glasuhr/pseuds/Glasuhr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While the suicide mission against the Collectors was wildly successful, the Normandy is rather beat up. Shepard helps Legion with one of the repairs, but is rather put-out by the location.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pressure

**Author's Note:**

> This has some basic editing via author, but pointing out mistakes/awkwardness would be much appreciated.

“ _Keelah_!” Tali yelped and backed away from the mess of gadgetry in which she was working. Shepard, passing by and helping anyone that needed something punched until it worked again, trotted over to her quarian friend.

“You okay there?” Shepard grabbed Tali’s arms and checked for any breaches in the suit.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Tali sighed. “A little tired and a little frustrated, but fine. I’ve been trying to fix this-” Tali started talking in techno-babble. Shepard kept her expression even and focused to give the illusion that she was following along. She must have failed, as Tali’s voice slowed to a stop. “I don’t know why I keep doing that. I might as well be saying ‘boop beep boop’ for all that you’d understand.”

Shepard shrugged. She didn’t know why Tali did that either, but she wasn’t going to be rude and interrupt her friend. Besides, the quarian was kind of cute when she rambled like that.

“Essentially,” Tali explained, “I don’t think I can fix this at the moment, but it needs to be fixed soon. I know everything is screwed up and we should just be amazed we survived the Collectors, but we’ll only work at 30 percent power until this is resolved.”

“Eh, that doesn’t sound good.” 30 percent power for anything had to be bad, Shepard thought. “Anything I can do?” Shepard held up her fists helpfully. Tali laughed.

“Actually, now that I think about it…” Tali waved at the geth fixing something in an opposite corner. “Hey Legion, you remember that idea we talked about earlier? Do you think Shepard could help you with that?”

“Possibly.” Legion considered as it set down, to Shepard’s eyes, random bits of metal. It stood up and approached the two organics. “Shepard-Commander has sufficient control over her appendages despite the lack of finesse in technological pursuits.”

“You don’t have to be nice about it. She’s a [gremlin].” Tali snorted, and Shepard frowned as her translator struggled with the last word. A quick check revealed that whatever Tali said and the rough translation both had one thing in common: a thing that tended to destroy electronics.

“Hey, I can help!” Shepard scowled. “...Maybe.”

“We can’t spare more than one person,” Tali admitted as she gestured towards the feverishly working crew. “And all you’d need to do is hold things in place while Legion repairs the connections. It should be easy enough, I think.”

“Alright.” Shepard made a show of cracking her knuckles. “Let’s do this.”

~~~~~

“Ugh.” Shepard groaned as she suited up. “You fuckers said nothing about the repairs taking place outside of the ship.” Her helmet remained tightly clutched in her hands.

“We told you now.” Legion replied. Shepard watched curiously as it snapped little bits and pieces onto its platform, most noticeably around the damaged section in the torso.

“What’s that for?” She asked.

“This platform is outfitted for many environments, but we have yet to make the repairs to allow survival in a vacuum.”

“Why haven’t you?” Shepard poked the puzzle piece of armor that covered the hole. “Fixed that, I mean.”

“We do not have the supplies.” Legion firmly pried the helmet from her and placed it over her head. It flipped the seals and waited until its omni-tool flashed green before heading towards the maintenance crew airlock.

“Eh?” Shepard wasn’t quite sure if that was a response to what the geth said or what it did.

“We were able to make the repairs for basic function but require other resources to return to our original capacity.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about that?” Shepard took in a shaky breath as they stepped into the small section of the airlock for decompression.

“Your heart rate is increasing.” Legion commented and waved its omni-tool over her. It lit green again. The top two head flaps lifted. “We do not sense a suit malfunction.”

“I’m, uh-” Shepard searched for some bullshit excuse, “Totally excited to get out there and repair shit. It really gets my blood pumping.” Fuck. That was stupid, and by the way Legion had yet to look away from her, she could assume it thought that was stupid too.

“Was that a humorous deflection?”

“Yeah?”

“You should work on your material.” Legion opened the small airlock and the magnetic function in Shepard’s boots kept her safely connected to the ship. Shepard almost felt put-out enough from Legion’s comment to ignore how her heart beat in her throat as she was exposed and vulnerable to the cold, distant stars of space.

“Shepard-Commander?” Legion was already outside and watching her from its sideways position. “This way.”

Shepard took in a deep breath, she was a big girl and a little PTSD wasn’t going to get in the way of doing her job, and took her first step outside. There, there was that feeling she didn’t miss at all back in training. That odd moment of disorientation as the outside hull that served as a wall now became her floor. She kept her muscles tensed as she followed the geth but it was a poor attempt at ignoring the weightlessness and that the _only_ thing keep her from floating off into nothingness were a couple of piddly magnets-

“Here.” Legion broke her thoughts into little pieces. It knelt down next to a blackened spot on the hull and carefully pried off the bits of useless metal that remained. It’s head light shined onto the damaged cables. Useful, that. “Shepard-Commander, hold these cables like this.”

Legion pulled two broken sections closer together. Shepard crouched opposite of the geth and took hold of the cables. Much to her dismay, her hands shook. Legion’s hands, though odd and alien with its three fingers, were larger and fit easily over hers as it attempted to stop the movement. That head light shined on their hands as Legion removed them, and brightened when her shaking resumed. It placed its hands back over hers. She couldn’t feel any heat, wouldn’t have even if the geth were organic because of her suit, but the pressure was real and anchoring.

“Why are you are shaking?” Legion asked.

“Excitement?”

“You have already attempted that particular deflection.” Legion reminded her.

“Right, uh,” Shepard swallowed hard, and then blinked when she finally noticed the reading in her helmet that stated that she was on a private comm channel and had been on this same channel since her helmet was placed on her head. “Huh.”

“There are various theories amongst the crew about your psychological state. We are not unaware of them.” Legion stated. Shepard glared.

“Yeah? And so you decided to bring me on a little field trip out the airlock to find out if they were true?” Shepard spoke through gritted teeth. “I know you guys like to have your cute little experiments to see how the organics react--don’t think for a moment I’ve forgotten that conversation--but this is a real asshole move.”

“This is not an experiment.” Legion’s grip on her hands tightened. “We would help you. What is wrong?”

“No data available.” Shepard smiled mockingly, though she doubted the geth could see it. Legion’s head flaps flared in response and there was a strange series of clicks that sounded almost _angry_.

“We do not find this deflection humorous either.”

“In that case, why don’t we set up one of the old combat drones and EDI can help you out? I’ll just drag my un-comedic ass back inside.” Shepard tried to pull away but Legion’s hold remained firm.

“That is both unnecessary and unlikely to work.” There was a long silence as Shepard seethed and Legion did whatever synthetics did during uncomfortable silences. “We were...disappointed when we discovered your death.”

Shepard’s eyes widened.

“We had numerous enemies and no allies, and the one organic we thought could change this ceased to exist. Sources on the organic extranet blamed us for the attack, though we were not responsible. That made our chances of peaceful contact even less likely than before.”

“That makes sense.” Shepard cleared her throat. “That still doesn’t explain why you used my armor.”

“You were dead.” The flaps lowered. “We had failed. This platform-Legion-I had failed.” The head light dimmed. “We sought to understand what made your programming superior. We sought to replicate this programming, to use this knowledge to upgrade our own and increase our chance of survival.”

“You wanted to become me?” Shepard asked incredulously.

“There is only one you.” Legion said. “But we aimed to learn from you. We found a human saying on the extranet about ‘walking a mile in another’s shoes’ but there were no shoes and the platform needed materials for repairs.”

“So you used the armor instead.” Shepard couldn’t stop the wry smile on her face even if she tried. “You took that saying literally. That’s adorable.” The head flaps undulated briefly and Legion looked down to their hands.

“Your respiration rate has decreased.”

“I was distracted.” Shepard said weakly as she felt her heart rate spike and she could almost swear the blackness of space got darker while the stars became painfully bright. “Thanks for reminding me, asshole.”

“We have been outside the ship for approximately ten minutes and counting.” Legion commented. “You remain undamaged.”

“Yay. Congratulations to me.” Shepard groaned. “Can we just do this? I want to go back inside.”

“Affirmative.” Legion slowly let go of her hands. The loss of pressure made her tremble but Shepard breathed and her hands stilled. The geth’s omni-tool came alive, and with precise movements it went to work at reconnecting the fiber-like wires at a steady pace. Shepard shook once and Legion was forced to pause.

“Sorry.” She mumbled. It said nothing and went back to work. It was several minutes later, and the work only a third complete, when Shepard decided that the silence except for her breathing was too much to stand. “You know, back when I was training to be a marine, I always figured I’d get killed in some stupid, violent way.”

Legion didn’t stop working but she assumed that the raised top head flaps, ones she always liked to pretend were eyebrows, meant it was listening.

“In fact, my old crew and I had a real macabre bet going on. Half of them had money that I’d go out in a gunfight because my grenade launcher malfunctioned and exploded in my face. Some had money that I’d screw up a hacking attempt and activate a trap. A few said I’d accidentally crash a gunship into a mech. Never did collect my money. Those poor bastards were taken out by the thresher maw.”

“They knew you are a [jinx].” The translator protested at the quarian word, the same one Tali said that it had tried to match with ‘gremlin’.

“Yeah.” Shepard huffed. She tried to speak casually, but she knew she was babbling. “So there I was, slowly falling closer to Alchera and I couldn’t breathe and there’s too many holes to fix and the stars were beautiful, and none of that even mattered. Actually, part of me thought it was a bit of a relief. I didn’t like the idea of floating forever in space. If my suit hadn’t been damaged and I wasn’t so close to the planet, I’d probably have died of dehydration. But I also didn’t want to be killed by burning up in atmosphere of Alchera. Burning up sounds like a miserable way to go.”

Legion reached out and gently moved her hands so a different set of damaged wires would show. Shepard swallowed. Her throat was dry, so it was painful.

“So yeah, suffocation. That kind of sucks too. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t punch anything in the face. All I could do was wriggle uselessly in zero g until my limbs stopped responding.” Shepard glanced up from her hands to the geth. It remained focused on its work. “I’m going to be pissed if you’re ignoring me after you dragged me out here.”

“You volunteered your help.” Legion reminded her. Then, almost as if an afterthought, “What do you fear?”

“I…” Shepard gritted her teeth. “Fucking hell, Legion, does it even _matter_?”

“Matter? In what context?” Legion asked, one of the top head flaps raised higher than the other.

“Me? You? Anything?” Shepard almost shrugged roughly before she remembered she was still holding the cables.

“We would not ask if we did not want to know.” Legion checked its work. It was almost done. “And knowing your fear could help prevent incidents in future situations.”

“Pft. Add a few unicorns and that’d almost sound like something Chambers would say.” Shepard rolled her eyes. There was a long silence. Shepard narrowed her eyes. “Did you ask Chambers about me?”

“Negative. We hacked her file on you.”

“Huh.” Shepard desperately wanted to stand and stretch and sleep. Dealing with this was not on that list. “That’s...something. Are you almost done here? My second wind’s about gone.”

“Affirmative.” A few minutes and a few wires later, and Legion was using some omni-gel to seal the cable closed. Shepard stood up to stretch when that weightless feeling made itself readily apparent again and it was only by remembering that the magnets were activated that she was able to breathe at all but still all the _stars and black and emptiness_ -

There was pressure on her wrist.

“Shepard-Commander.” Legion’s hand was wrapped around her wrist.

“I don’t want. To die alone.” Shepard strained through rapid breaths. She watched the geth as it slowly stood and stepped to stand next to her, close enough that their arms brushed.  

 **  
**“You are not alone.” Legion reminded her. Shepard chuckled weakly. That was cheesy and rather poor comfort since she wasn’t currently dying, but she’d give the geth props for trying. She stepped forward, eager to get back inside, and was surprised when Legion neglected to release her wrist. Instead, he stepped with her.

**Author's Note:**

> Ouch, now that I think about it, this is rather painful if you assume everything continues according to canon.


End file.
